


And We'll All Live Until We're Granted a Waking Garden

by TehChou



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Hospitals, M/M, Metaphors, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehChou/pseuds/TehChou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic and sickness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And We'll All Live Until We're Granted a Waking Garden

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic and sickness. The doctors hover around his bed, smiling and preoccupied. They announce their prognosis with grave sincerity: “I’m sorry Mr. Xavier, but we’re afraid you won’t be able to walk again ( _should I buy carnations or day lilies for my daughter’s confirmation?_ )”

“Carnations are tacky,” he replies and the doctor stares at him for a long moment before Charles catches himself and runs a hand ruefully through his hair.

“Just a passing thought,” he says and the doctor goes back to smiling and solemnly explaining his new life.

 

It's easy to be angry, at Erik and at his sister who left him, but Charles has never really had the patience for it; when something is wrong he takes steps to fix it, and when he can't he accepts and lets go.

( _He is, of course patently ignoring a lot of instances in his life, re: Raven, but Charles is very good at ignoring his own faults. It's much easier to lie to himself when he can't read his own mind._ )

So it's much simpler to sit back and think about what he can do now that his former life has been so thoroughly trounced.

( _He likes to think this is humor, but the looks on his students faces and the humming in their minds screams otherwise._ )

The children are important, of course, so he settles back for the long game and wheels himself through the mansion with a bright smile for any of the students who ask his help.

( _They wonder at his cheerfulness, their eyes pry open the cracks and his smiles are plaster patches floating in spaces they’ve already outgrown._ )

 

Hank pushes his glasses up his feline nose.

"I think I've figured it out," he says, calmly, turning away and picking up an instrument previously hidden by his endless sprawl of papers. "How to bring Raven back."

It's a torture device is what it looks like; all spines and knobs and twisting lines. Charles eyes it dubiously.

"That's. . . lovely, Hank, but perhaps it's better to focus on other things today. How is your reversal serum coming along?"

"Oh, that," Hank says, fiddling with the device and not looking up. "I've given up on it. This is who I am now," and his mind screams in a deafening crescendo (NOTMENOTMENOTME) as he adjusts a knob.

 

Sometime in the ensuing month, after Charles heals enough to come home from the hospital, Darwin returns. Alex’s grin is fierce and he claps Darwin on the back with enough force to to make a grown man stumble if his skin wasn’t made of stone. He howls and Darwin winces and they both break out into peals of laughter. It’s a warming sight and Charles beams over them both like a benefactor. ( _He is, of course, not over them, but the effect is the same, anyways; a father with his children_ ( _children leave_ ).)

 

Charles rolls past a piece of peeling wallpaper. _I should get that fixed,_ he thinks absently.

 

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic and sickness. He blinks a few times against the searing brightness. There’s a warmth at his hand. Charles turns his head and Erik’s by his side, chin in palm, staring morosely out the window.

“You came back,” Charles whispers to his profile like granite. Erik turns his head.

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic-

 

“Okay,” Sean says with a big grin stretching across his face. His cheeks wrinkle with enthusiasm. “So what does an elephant do on a plane?" A pregnant pause. " _He swims_!” His laughter brays out like fireworks in Charles’ head. Charles grimaces but pastes on a smile, even manages an easy laugh. Sean’s laughter shutters anyways; perhaps _he_ ’s the empath.

 

Charles is upset; he can’t remember why, precisely, but it seems a trifle, inconsequential. He sits with a heavy woolen blanket over his knees ( _he takes this on the faith of what his eyes can see and his arms still feel that his legs do not_ ) and sets to work on the plan he’s had brewing through his brain since he woke coherently in the hospital. ( _Charles is resourceful and endlessly patient_.) His pen scratches furiously against the stretches of paper. When he stops, panting for breath, the words swim illegibly before his his eyes. He up-heaves the entire pile off his desk with one passionate sweep and buries his hands in his hair ( _Charles will go bald by the end of this_ ).

 

Alex isn’t speaking to Darwin any longer. Their reunion had been hopeful, a bright spot in an atmosphere full to overflowing with tensions.

So it is a surprise, if a welcome one, when Charles is making his way past the children’s wing and hears a raised voice. He stops outside the cracked door and peeks in. He has no qualms looking in anymore than he does when he peers into noisy minds. ( _Charles is a good man, he is trustworthy and responsible and never deliberate._ ) Alex is standing in front of Darwin, yelling in his face. His posture is painfully tense, drawn in on itself and spittle flies between them. Darwin is still, with his back to the door, and therefore, to Charles.

“Don’t you get it man, don’t you get it at all?! This is my fault, _my fault_ that you-”

Darwin takes a long step forward, swallowing the distance between them. His hands grip Alex’s wrists, caught in mid emphatic swing. Charles can’t see what happens when they step too close, when their bodies meld together in contrast, but he can guess.

Charles swallows a lump of fear and quietly leaves them to their business.

Darwin leaves a week later. Charles doesn’t understand why everyone seems to be confused by this; it was a foregone conclusion ( _children always leave_ ) and Charles is simply glad that he didn’t stay longer. Alex is devastated and Charles catches him packing his bag one day, practically throwing his clothes into a battered suitcase.

“It was he who left, Alex,” Charles reminds him gently. “Sometimes we accept what we cannot change and move on.”

The hypocrisy is sickening when Charles thinks of paper tattered and scattered like leaves, but Alex stays because Alex trusts him.

( **I won’t be him, I won’t let myself break.** ) Alex sets his jaw like a mule and goes through his days with determination.

He misses targets again and Charles tuts and shakes his head.

 

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic and sickness. It’s dark today, the walls are indistinguishable from each other; they stretch into one lone horizon, a grey that is broken only by the green and blue splotches dancing before his eyes, a grey that reaches its fingers into his mind, nothing but silence.

( _This is not living_.)

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools-

 

“You sent her away?” Darwin sits next to him on the steps out front, leg drawn up. He rests his upper body on his knee.

“Of course. She would be missed if I had not. We both agreed that it was for the best; the safety of the students is paramount.”

( _ **They agreed on nothing.** The last thought before her memory sank into itself was a bright flash of indignation and a hot wave of fury. Eventually they, too, went on their way._ )

Darwin is silent for a moment.

“The hardest choice isn’t always the best,” he says, finally. Charles smiles like a broken record.

“Of course not,” he agrees. “But sometimes it is the only choice left to us.”

Again, they lapse into silence, Darwin a ball of thoughtfulness and brewing questions. Charles enjoys the sunset ( _there is a streak of red that eats away at the clouds and the light, winding through them both in a snaking pattern. It’s beautiful, even if looking at it makes him a little queasy._ )

Eventually the moment passes and they’re called in for dinner (Sean is an excellent cook when the menu is pancakes) and Charles cheerfully rolls back into the mansion, Darwin following at a more sedate pace. The door creaks and Charles will ask Alex to repair it, later.

 

Charles wakes to the smell of sterile tools and antiseptic and sickness. He can’t move his body, in the grips of a paralytic episode. He feels detached from the sensation and does not blink at the over head lights to dispel their blankness. ( _Is it drugs? Or will he be like this forever? He doesn’t mind, either way the effect is the same._ )

Charles wakes to the smell-

 

“So we should totally celebrate,” Sean says, rubbing his hands together gleefully over his heaped plate. Hank frowns, blue fur shining over the high ridges of his furrowed brow.

“For what,” he asks, derision lacing his tone ( **NOT ME** ).

Alex is still stubbornly silent, radiating guilt like a small, over-bright star. Sean looks between them with an open-mouthed confusion. Eventually he goes back to his pancakes, smothered in too much sugar. Charles does not approve ( **shut up Charles** ) but knows there isn’t much he can say to deter a hungry teenager. Darwin lays a hand on his back after everyone else leaves, but Sean just mumbles something and walks away, locking himself in his room. Charles does not see him much after that.

 

Charles wakes to the smell of antiseptic and flowers. They’re carnations; Charles sighs and rolls over to escape them.

 

Hank huffs an explosive sigh of frustration. The device in his hand fizzles. Pieces flake away. One has the audacity to land on Charles’ loafer-ed foot. Charles eyes it and wiggles his toes to dislodge it. Nothing moves.

“Perhaps it’s time to give up on this past-time,” Charles says after he tears his gaze away. By then there’s not much left of the device, just a few tattered edges held together with smoke and a dream. Hank bares his teeth at it and carefully places it back where it started. It promptly shatters into dust.

“There’s no point,” he agrees ( _who else would it be?_ ) and doesn’t notice. Abruptly, his mind goes silent and Charles wonders that he misses the lack.

 

The mansion shakes on its foundation. Sean is holed up in his room, Alex is making a mess of the bunker, Darwin remains disappeared into the mist and Hank wanders the house in a daze. Charles wonders at how easy it is to smile into an atmosphere like that.

He wakes.


End file.
